Pausanias, the Spartan by Lord Lytton

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"But if a mesmeriser could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmeriser could also affect inanimate objects: move
chairs--open and shut doors?"

"Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects--we never
having been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is
commonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power
akin to mesmerism, and superior to it--the power that in the old
days was called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate
objects of matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be against
nature--it would be only a rare power in nature which might be given
to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by
practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extend
over the dead--that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the
dead may still retain--and compel, not that which ought properly to
be called the SOUL, and which is for beyond human reach, but rather a
phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itself
apparent to our senses--is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon
which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would
be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment
which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of
the _Curiosities of Literature_ cites as credible:--A flower perishes;
you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived
are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor
re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of
that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in
life. It may be the same with the human being. The soul has as much
escaped you as the essence or elements of the flower. Still you
may make a spectrum of it. And this phantom, though in the popular
superstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must not be
confounded with the true soul; it is but the eidolon of the dead form.
Hence, like the best-attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul; that
is, of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for
little or no object--they seldom speak when they do come; if they
speak, they utter no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth.
American spirit-seers have published volumes of communications in
prose and verse, which they assert to be given in the names of the
most illustrious dead--Shakespeare, Bacon--heaven knows whom. Those
communications, taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher
order than would be communications from living persons of fair
talent and education; they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon,
Shakespeare, and Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what is more
noticeable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on the earth
before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them
to be truthful), I see much that philosophy may question, nothing that
it is incumbent on philosophy to deny--viz., nothing supernatural.
They are but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet
discovered the means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so
doing, tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-like shapes appear in
a magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and remove material objects,
or a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our
blood--still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as
by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In some
constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and these constitutions
may produce chemic wonders--in others a natural fluid, call it
electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the wonders
differ from Normal Science in this--they are alike objectless,
purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and
therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated
them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as
myself, was the remote originator; and I believe unconsciously to
himself as to the exact effects produced, for this reason: no two
persons, you say, have ever told you that they experienced exactly the
same thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever experience exactly the
same dream. If this were an ordinary imposture, the machinery would
be arranged for results that would but little vary; if it were a
supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would surely be
for some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my
persuasion is, that they originate in some brain now far distant; that
that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that
what does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting,
half-formed thoughts; in short, that, it has been but the dreams of
such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That
this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement,
that it is malignant and destructive, I believe; some material force
must have killed my dog; the same force might, for aught I know, have
sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by terror as
the dog--had my intellect or my spirit given me no countervailing
resistance in my will."

"It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no
animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and
mice are never found in it."

"The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their
existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has
a resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my
theory?"

"Yes, though imperfectly--and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word),
however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and
hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house
the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?"

"I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal
feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door
of the bedroom which I occupied, forms a starting-point or receptacle
for the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to
have the walls opened, the floor removed--nay, the whole room pulled
down. I observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built
over the small back-yard, and could be removed without injury to the
rest of the building."

"And you think, if I did that----"

"You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it, I am so persuaded that
I am right, that I will pay half the expense if you will allow me to
direct the operations."

"Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to
write to you."

About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. J----, telling
me that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had
found the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from
which I had taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my
own; that he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom
I rightly conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six
years ago (a year before the date of the letters) she had married,
against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious
character; in fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate.
She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had
served in the capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage. She
had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one
child of about six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of
this brother was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed
some marks of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed
sufficient to warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of
"found drowned."

The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased
brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only
child--and in event of the child's death, the sister inherited. The
child died about six months afterwards--it was supposed to have been
neglected and ill-treated. The neighbours deposed to have heard it
shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death, said
that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was
covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child
had sought to escape--crept out into the back-yard--tried to scale the
wall--fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones
in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty,
there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to
palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity
of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may,
at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before
the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly,
and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which was
lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow was left in
affluence: but reverses of various kinds had befallen her: a bank
broke--an investment failed--she went into a small business and became
insolvent--then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower,
from housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work--never long retaining a
place, though nothing decided against her character was ever alleged.
She was considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways;
still nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the
workhouse, from which Mr. J---- had taken her, to be placed in charge
of the very house which she had rented as mistress in the first year
of her wedded life.

Mr. J---- added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished
room which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of
dread while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen
anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors
removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and
would commence any day I would name.

The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house--we
went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then
the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a
trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed
down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended
into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected.
In this room there had been a window and a flue, but they had been
bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help of candles
we examined this place; it still retained some mouldering
furniture--three chairs, an oak settle, a table--all of the fashion of
about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the wall,
in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's
dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a
gentleman of some rank--costly steel buckles and buttons, like those
yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword--in a waistcoat
which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened
and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and
an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since
passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron safe fixed
to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to get picked.

In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on the
shelves were several small bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped.
They contained colourless volatile essences, of the nature of which
I shall only say that they were not poisons-- phosphor and ammonia
entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass
tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of
rock-crystal, and another of amber--also a loadstone of great power.

In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and
retaining the freshness of its colours most remarkably, considering
the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that
of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps
forty-seven or forty-eight.

It was a remarkable face--a most impressive face. If you could fancy
some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human
lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that
countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness
of frontal--the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength
of the deadly jaw--the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green
as the emerald--and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power.

Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it,
and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle
a ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date
1765. Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on
being pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Within-side
the lid were engraved, "Marianna to thee--Be faithful in life and in
death to----." Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it
was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken of by old men in my
childhood as the name borne by a dazzling charlatan who had made a
great sensation in London for a year or so, and had fled the country
in the charge of a double murder within his own house--that of his
mistress and his rival. I said nothing of this to Mr. J----, to whom
reluctantly I resigned the miniature.

We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron
safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not
locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the chinks
the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth, we found a very
singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small thin book, or
rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal; this saucer was filled
with a clear liquid--on that liquid floated a kind of compass, with a
needle shifting rapidly round; but instead of the usual points of a
compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by
astrologers to denote the planets. A peculiar, but not strong nor
displeasing odour, came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood
that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this
odour, it produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt
it, even the two workmen who were in the room--a creeping tingling
sensation from the tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair.
Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the
needle of the compass went round and round with exceeding swiftness,
and I felt a shock that ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped
the saucer on the floor. The liquid was spilt--the saucer was
broken--the compass rolled to the end of the room--and at that instant
the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant had swayed and rocked them.

The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by
which we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing
more happened, they were easily induced to return.

Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather,
with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and
on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old
monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus: "On all that
it can reach within these walls--sentient or inanimate, living or
dead--as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and
restless be the dwellers therein."

We found no more. Mr. J---- burnt the tablet and its anathema. He
razed to the foundations the part of the building containing the
secret room with the chamber over it. He had then the courage
to inhabit the house himself for a month, and a quieter,
better-conditioned house could not be found in all London.
Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no
complaints.

THE END.

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